what are you reading now?
entertainment
Well-known member
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. I think a lot of dissensus would take to this one. Sort of academic french style but nothing too bad, very imaginative writing about the meaning of the house, its archetypes, palaces and huts, attics and basements. A lot of stuff about daydreaming, the importance of a place in which to daydream. Essays such as "The dialectics of inside and outside" and "Phenomenology of roundness".
entertainment
Well-known member
Then I read a novel called Lights by Edmund Davie. A wonderful little book full of great sentences. Presents a full and plausible consciousness of the modern eccentric. About the desperate yet beautiful attempts to make art out of the everyday materials of the city. A must read!
jenks
thread death
Yeah I read that and Fup by him - was ok nothing special like you say YA Pynchon at best
version
Well-known member
Pynchon did an introduction to Stone Junction.
Uncollected Pynchon: Introduction to "Stone Junction"
Thomas Pynchon's introduction to Jim Dodge's novel, "Stone Junction."
shipwrecklibrary.com
IdleRich
IdleRich
Lately I was reading a book called Drop City by TC Boyle which takes its name from a hippy commune in Colorado. The novel relocates it to California, amalgamates several such places and proceeds to roundly take the piss.
Anyway this girl saw me reading it and said she had read a book about the real Drop City which was a kind of response to the perceived unfair treatment they received in the novel. She kindly passed the book to me on Weds and I've just opened it now, it's called Droppers by Mark Matthews and it mentions the other book almost straight away.
Anyway this girl saw me reading it and said she had read a book about the real Drop City which was a kind of response to the perceived unfair treatment they received in the novel. She kindly passed the book to me on Weds and I've just opened it now, it's called Droppers by Mark Matthews and it mentions the other book almost straight away.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This is a bit like recording music consisting of rhyming poetry being recited over a looped drum break and claiming you've never heard of hip-hop, though, isn't it.
Luke Turner, "out of the woods".
OK, started strong but now meandering a big and I've lost any sense of the point of what he's trying to say.
Although this last chapter, "Flesh and wood", about him going to Berghain and then the grunewald, some woods outside Berlin, was good
OK, started strong but now meandering a big and I've lost any sense of the point of what he's trying to say.
Although this last chapter, "Flesh and wood", about him going to Berghain and then the grunewald, some woods outside Berlin, was good
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IdleRich
IdleRich
After reading two books on Drop City I was at a momentary loss as to what to read and so I picked up the Le Carre that I mentioned before and listlessly read a few pages at a rate that reflected my enjoyment of about one line every twenty minutes. To my relief I spotted lying on a table in my bedroom The House by the Churchyard by Sheridan Le Fanu - I thought to myself that I was quite in the mood for taking a break from Le Carre with a few spooky ghost stories... on reading the foreword I discovered that it's actually a novel - and it's not a ghost story either, oh well it's got to be better than The Little Drummer Girl you'd think...
william_kent
Well-known member
I think I mentioned I persevered with the Le Carre, but it took weeks, now that's what I call hard work! It's not what you want from him, where were the seedy old men ruminating on the bad things they did for what they thought were the right reasons? And at what cost to the soul, etc.?
edit: the best bit in Little Drummer Girl is when the Mossad crew meet up with UK Military "Intelligence" and the British ranking officer, who helped the Palestinians in the 40s, can barely disguise his contempt for the Israelis... at that moment Le Carre displays his comic genius, but only for a few a paragraphs... I'm surprised I limped to the finish line with this novel but I was determined not to give up, but it wasn't really worth the effort
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IdleRich
IdleRich
Well tonight we are dj-ing in Porto, we have a three hour bus journey and my phone has broken (again) so I'm sticking Little Drummer Girl and The House by the Churchyard (Le Carre and Le Fanu) in the bag for the journey so maybe I will read some more of it this weekend out of sheer necessity - if that doesn't work then I'll just burn it and dispose of it safely so that no-one else has to suffer through it. But yeah, you've nailed it there, a distinct lack of washed out old men dressed in brown walking around in a cloud of failure, but who manage to win cos everyone else fails even more.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I actually may be going to a conference in Porto mid-March - any tips?
entertainment
Well-known member
This place called Hotelier hosts experimental music shows in what looks like a repurposed swimming pool. Very nice little place, I'm sure Rich knows it. Nice cheap wine and food as well.
shakahislop
Well-known member
in mid-march you should get some migratory birds on their way to africa, those green and red parrots that are in all the Don't Miss sections of the guidebooks. be careful on the eastern side of town though
get portuguese tacos at tacos obligados, and eat some side-chuck at a stall
see the famous steam being released into the sea, but that's probably on your list already
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Assuming "side-chunk" sounds more appetizing in Portuguese.
william_kent
Well-known member
yes, that is a good one - the prose gets a bit purple at points but some incredible anecdotes - the first meeting with Nico where she's flicking the crusty scab off to work the needle in is an image which has lodged in my memory
woops
is not like other people
i sometimes feel chastened by its asperity